Everyone looks up to Amazon as a paragon of excellence. That its owner arguably has become the richest billionaire in America is a testament to that. But even the mighty giant has its fair share of critics and problems. On top of this list is delivery-related truck accidents. Unfortunately, these mishaps have caused the deaths of a number of Americans. You might think all the trouble is perhaps due to the increased load during the pandemic. Nope. These accidents started earlier, even from as far as 2015.
Indeed, a delivery gone haywire will cost you. Think of the delay of your to-deliver goods or services. In addition, there’s damage to the delivery truck to account for. Worse, you’ll have to contend with major injuries and possible deaths. It’s a good thing reliable insurance can help mitigate the situation. And that should mean relying on the services of an experienced truck driver attorney to protect your interests and aid in settling responsibilities in an orderly fashion. Still, it’s paramount to avoid these things at all costs.
The good news is machine learning can be the hero of the day. When everyone wants to have their goods delivered ASAP, things could come to a head. Yes, delivery truck crashes are fast becoming a trend in pandemic times, but not if an automotive artificial intelligence can’t help it.
Haste Makes Waste
If you see the root of a problem, finding a solution should be a lot easier. One wrong assumption you can get is perhaps all the accidents happen during the night when visibility is poor. However, records show about half of the truck accidents occurred during the day, specifically from 6 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. Most of these accidents happen when the clock is about to strike 3. Moreover, most happened on Tuesdays.
What does this mean? Well, it should tell us that most of these accidents are drivers bent on getting the goods delivered. The problem is while being on time is a virtue, respecting lives on the road is a bigger virtue.
The cracks in Amazon’s delivery system seem to have shown this. As reported, drivers have resorted to peeing in bottles to pooping in bags just to get deliveries on time. Also, one lady driver puts it she “didn’t have the time to stop to change her menstrual pads”. That certainly is indicative of how messy things have become lately.
While not every truck driver may be doing that, it just shows how real is the struggle of meeting a daily quota for a delivery truck driver. And that can surely be problematic in the long run. When a driver becomes too emotionally involved, the risk of getting into an accident rises.
Automotive Artificial Intelligence to the Rescue
Road accidents aren’t just a truck delivery problem. Every year, WHO data states over 1.25 million people die due to road traffic crashes. Put in the mix the number of the injured which can run to 30 million, and you know it’s not a small problem that’s bound to go away over time.
Distracted driving along with alcohol impairment and drowsiness are the major causes of these accidents. In short, most accidents are driver-related.
It’s important therefore that we focus on the root of the problem: the driver. And this is where artificial intelligence software that can sense the emotion of a driver matters. It does this by analyzing the facial expression of the human behind the wheel.
How It’s Done
The business of the hour is Affectiva, a developer of artificial intelligence or AI that senses emotions. To do that, the company has a data repository of 6 million faces of people from 87 countries. Such data is utilized to train its face-reading algorithms. By doing so, the program can detect the emotion of the driver.
This is done by using a camera installed in the vehicle. Then, Affectiva’s AI monitors the facial expression of the driver doing so in real-time. To make its observations more conclusive, voice activity inside the driver’s cockpit will also be recorded.
Collected data will form the basis of the building of an advanced monitoring system that is designed to take appropriate action should anomalies in the driver’s emotions transpires. These could include calling the attention of the driver or stopping the vehicle altogether.
It may sound counterintuitive as any business would want their delivery trucks to plow through. But it’s all worth it as at the end of the day you’d be saving more lives, not to mention saving your company from unnecessary trouble.
